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If David Hardy and his instructors at the Atelier have any truck with the past thirty years of art instruction  a period that has championed some very alternative ways of producing images  they're not letting on. The drawing and painting classes are old-school in the 18th-century sense; it's a wonder students aren't expected to grind their own pigments and sleep on the studio floor at night after sweeping out the master's charcoal shavings. Tucked above the Temescal Cafe, the school's foyer could lead to yet another yoga studio or psychotherapy office. It's only once you're within the sole classroom, surrounded by plastic fruit and replicas of classical busts arranged on draped white fabric, that you realize you're in for the kind of rigorous classical approach that leads with practice to a profound understanding of how to render drapery, get color and proportions correct, and capture the subtleties of chiaroscuro. It's not for the faint of heart, but there's virtually nobody else who teaches this way, at this length, in the Bay Area right now.